Saturday, February 27, 2016

ARC Review: Leaving Yesterday by Zoe Dawson

Leaving Yesterday is my first book from Zoe Dawson, as well as the first book in her Laurel Falls series. I was really excited to read this book after reading the blurb, even with it being a new to me author. Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to make it past 25% and this book ended up being a DNF for me.

At the beginning I was drawn in and thought that this book was going to be very enjoyable. Rafferty Hamilton is a recent divorce that has left New York to head west and scout locations for the family business. Her car breaks down outside the small town of Laurel Falls, and Trace Black comes to rescue her and tow her car back to his family's garage. Trace's family life was a bit complicated, but I was liking all the members of the family and how they interacted. But then things took a turn, and something happened that I like to call "The Character Dump". This is where the author throws in a ton of characters all at one time and the reader is left to try and figure out who all these new people are, and if they are important enough to the story to try and remember all the details or if they will promptly disappear and aren't worth trying to figure out.

Things went from bad to worse for me after all the new characters were brought in, as we went from having Rafferty and Trace's POVs, to also suddenly getting another POV courtesy of a side character. Soon Rafferty and Trace's story was taking a backseat to that of Trace's little brother Harley suffering from what appears to be PTSD and Anzu (the one whose POV we were suddenly getting). Then we were getting into a character named Greg Chamber's POV as well, and it all just became too much. I was confused and didn't really care about figuring out what was going on. The story just felt all over the place, and at this point we are only 25% of the way through and this is the first book in the series. It wasn't like I had missed out on what was going on from previous books. This was all being thrown at the reader at the very beginning, and I just had no idea what was going on or where things were going. This should have been Rafferty and Trace's story with some set-up for the continuation of the series. Instead it felt like Dawson was trying to cram as much information about all the other players in the series here, when the focus should have been the couple whose book it actually was. This was just not working for me and I was frustrated and confused, so I threw in the towel and made the choice not to continue.

It really was sad for me to DNF this book as I had really started to like Rafferty and Trace at the beginning. Unfortunately it was just a case of the writing and execution here rather than the characters. If this sounds like a book that you would enjoy, I recommend giving it a shot. It could just be me and that it didn't work for what I personally enjoy when reading.